spnfans

‘The Winchesters’ Explores Monsters of War, Both Literal and Metaphorical

November 7, 2022November 8, 2022spnfans

The fourth episode of ‘The Winchesters’ first season is titled “Monsters of War,” which is a good description of what it was about – fighting your monsters, whether you’re a hunter or a veteran or anyone who’s experienced loss, grief and trauma. The opening is an older man stumbling down a psychiatric hospital corridor, walking right into a vivid flashback of his time in the midst of a war, bombs flying, warning shouts of “Incoming!” blaring. He takes refuge in an empty room only to find himself facing something that calls itself “Destiny” armed with a spear.

Blood splatter, title card, Dean Winchester, narrator.

Dean: Fighting the battle between good and evil isn’t easy, especially when the first monster you have to face is the one inside yourself.

I don’t really need it spelled out for me, but yes, true that. One of the main premises of Supernatural from day one, when the monsters Sam and Dean were fighting were not just the literal ones we saw onscreen. Cut to John and Mary sparring like the aforementioned Sam and Dean often did, Drake Rodger shirtless because, well, Drake Rodger, and Mary looking authentically seventies and I’m pretty sure I had those shorts.

John doesn’t want to stop or take a break, saying he missed fighting, even though in the service it was 24/7 “gym class with grenades” which does not sound like fun. He laughs it off defensively, but when Mary laughs too, he admits that was Murph’s line, and the defensive laughter fades away as he remembers his friend’s violent death. Mary realizes that he needs to punch something “that can punch back” to get those kind of big feelings out, so they spar for real. Mary taunts him a bit with “monsters aren’t gonna play nice and neither should you”, and bests him what seems like a little too easily to me – he’s a trained fighter too, after all, and I wouldn’t mind him coming out on top once in a while to make it realistic.

Carlos arrives when they’re in what looks like a compromising position, asking if he’s interrupting “whatever kind of hetero mating ritual this is” which did make me laugh. Sparring always seems a bit like it should engender those kind of questions to be honest, no matter who’s doing it.

Wild Horses, New Rangers and Realistic Progress on Last Week’s ‘Walker’

November 3, 2022spnfans

Last week’s episode of ‘Walker’ was in some ways a quieter episode than the first few of this third season, but no less impactful. I’ve been traveling for the past week, so this is a drive-by recap and review, but I have to give a shout out to a few things about the episode that I loved. Number 1? The horses! The title is ‘Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away,’ which makes me sing the Rolling Stones in my head immediately, but also refers to multiple themes in the episode – and to the fact that there are actually wild horses in it! Beautiful wild horses. I can watch horses on my TV screen happily for a very long time, so just that fact put a smile on my face.

It also gave me mixed feelings about the actual plot of the episode, at least the case-of-the-week one. Trey is in his last week of being a trainee, Capt James having pulled ALL the strings to get his military service to count as the years of training he would have been doing. The show acknowledges this as unprecedented, which is good because otherwise I might have eyerolled. But they make it part of the plot, and of Capt. James’ good faith attempt to change the system from the inside, with his acknowledgement that if it fails, his own career is also on the line.

That means that James, Walker and Cassie put Trey in charge of a sort of test case – to take down a trio of people who are freeing wild mustangs from “kill pens” and letting them go. Hence my mixed feelings. I was the Research Assistant in grad school who snuck back into the lab the night before it was “kill day” for all the rats who’d “volunteered” as test subjects and hence had little metal cones sewn into their poor little heads – and umm, liberated, quite a few. My kids had the best pets growing up, what can I say? The ‘conehead rats’ were famous with their friend groups.

Anyway, so I might not be the right audience for going after a trio of people who see themselves as do-gooders freeing beautiful wild horses who are about to be made into dog food. On the other hand, they almost run over a ranch hand accomplishing it, so that’s not exactly okay. And as Capt. James points out when Cassie also questions it (making me very fond of Cassie at that moment), they are defacing federal land. Which, to be honest, sounds like one of those things people in power use as an excuse…but technically he’s right and they can’t be reckless about it like they’re being, clearly. Interestingly, Walker also bristles when James says they have to “go through legitimate channels”, remembering the lessons he learned from his superior officer in the Marines, which is exactly not that. In fact, he has a flashback when James says those words, for a moment not even present in the here and now as he remembers.

Cordell: Sometimes people ignore legitimate channels when conditions on the ground call for it.

Cassie: Wait, are you agreeing with me??

Trey takes on the case and puts on the white hat (and the short sleeve very very tight shirt that I guess is his version of the Ranger uniform but no one is complaining so carry on, Ranger Trey…) and everyone cheers.

They also applaud Walker being back, although Cassie and James notice how he keeps zoning out and are worried. James knows he put Walker back in the field too soon before, and Abeline definitely put the fear of God into him when her son was missing this time.

There’s a fair amount of humor in this episode as James, Walker and Cassie put Trey through the end of his “hell week”, getting him to do silly things like “1, 2, 3, Rangers!” complete with the hand motions and taking way too much pleasure in Trey lucking out (not) by having to work with a bristly fed. Trey takes this all in good spirits, to his credit.

And we get alot of adorable Jared Padalecki smiles.

Eventually, Trey disobeys James’ orders to stay put and wait for them to arrive when Trey finds the horse thieves – he instead jumps into the back of the trailer, much to the surprise of the horse inside. More beautiful horses, yay!

Sheriff Beau Gets To Fanboy – Big Sky 3.06!

November 2, 2022spnfans

Get ready for tonight’s brand new episode of Big Sky with last week’s wrap up of the adventures of Sheriff Beau Arlen – in which he gets to indulge his fanboy side and do some badass stunts, probably much to the delight of actor Jensen Ackles. Last week’s episode once again opened with a Supernatural-esque creepy scary moment – a noise downstairs, a woman wakes her husband to check it out, when she runs downstairs to see what happened she finds him dead on the driveway. And someone driving away in his sportscar!

I half expected the ‘Supernatural’ title card to flash onscreen!

Here’s my what-happened-to-Sheriff-Beau-in-this-episode wrap up of what happens next. First, Beau in jeans and denim jacket, prominent beau…bow legs looking fine as he and Jenny and Cassie investigate the burnt out blue and white Suburban.

Beau gets a call – which he answers with the very Sheriff-like “Arlen, talk to me” – and off they go to investigate the murder of the poor husband.

Turns out it’s a 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, which Beau definitely appreciates. Yes, we get fanboy Beau and some shades of Dean Winchester all in one this episode!

“No way he would’ve left his Baby naked and exposed,” Beau says, and every Dean Winchester fan swoons at Jensen Ackles calling a car ‘Baby’. At a convention recently, someone asked about the Supernatural shout outs in Big Sky and Ackles admitted that yeah, those are put in by him – and that the show has been totally down with going along with that. (Excellent marketing strategy, gotta say). Anyway, Beau is smart, figuring there’s probably a lojack on it.

Everyone flirts with Hoyt in this episode, including the cop watching the car until they get there – to no avail. He tries hard, but she’s clearly not interested. Beau is mostly interested in the car, swearing when he opens the trunk and sees that someone cut her up.

Beau: Savage!

(Also every Supernatural fan half expected Jensen Ackles to open that trunk and find a devil’s trap and lots of weapons in it, let’s be honest…”

‘The Winchesters’ Gets Spooky For Halloween Week!

October 31, 2022spnfans

The title of The Winchesters third episode is the message of the episode as well: ‘You’re lost, little girl.” It’s about loss – of all kinds – and also about being lost, and figuring out how to find yourself afterwards. And that does not just apply to little girls.

The Kids Next Door

The episode revolves around Mary’s neighbors, a young girl and boy (8 year old Carrie and 12 year old Ford) whose mother is a long haul trucker who is often away for days at a time. It’s the 70s, but it still seems really iffy to have kids this young at home alone for days at a time – I know, I know, shades of John Winchester later. How much did he learn from the Campbells and their neighbors anyway?

The little girl, Carrie, contacts her mother on the CB radio, saying she can’t find her stuffed bear Bernice anywhere, and asking her mother to come home. The mom says the family needs the paycheck, she’ll be home in a few days, she needs Carrie to be a big girl – which is all kinda heartbreaking and also once again reminiscent of John Winchester of the future asking his son Dean to step up and be a big boy long before he should have.

Side note: I remember CB radios from the time before cell phones (yes, I actually remember those times) – I once went on a cross country trip with my husband-to-be and he had a CB radio in the car and we made the whole trek going back and forth with all the truckers we were sharing the road with. When we stopped at the first truck stop for dinner, they were all amazed that we were “a four wheeler”!

Anyway, there’s eerie music, a thud thud thud, and then there’s a burlap sack on the table. Carrie opens it and Bernice the bear is in it. Yay? Not yay. No sooner does Carrie happily crawl into bed with Bernice than the sack starts wriggling and then a freaking creepy as hell hand comes out, nails like claws, and then we see Carrie scream as a giant shadow looms over the bed.

Now that’s an opener! Worthy of the mother ship and its horror show roots – and it’s scary because we don’t see the monster, we see Carrie and her terror instead.

Family Histories

Cut to the title card and our erstwhile narrator, Dean Winchester.

There’s no map to being a hunter, no playbook. You’ve gotta follow your gut, but that can only take you so far. Truth is, you can’t do it all on your own. You need other people to help guide the way. Your friends, your family. Otherwise you just end up lost.

I guess that’s a theme of Supernatural too, from the pilot episode on, where Dean came to get Sam at school and said he couldn’t do it alone (Sam: yes you can. Dean: yeah well I don’t want to…)

Dean hasn’t forgotten that lesson, but apparently Samuel Campbell is actually trying to do it alone, and it turns out there’s more than him being missing going on in Mary’s life. Her mother is also out of touch, no word from her and last Mary heard she was working with hunters in Minnesota a few months ago. Mary says sadly that she’s not even sure her mother knows her dad is missing. Apparently Deanna and Samuel are separated, which – what?! That’s a canon change I didn’t see coming (assuming it will make sense whenever things are explained in episode 13 if not before…but surely Deanna would be keeping tabs on her hunter husband even if they were separated?)

Mary says that nothing has been the same for their family since Maggie died, for any of them. I hope they explore that more – I could get behind the show going a little deeper into things like loss, which really can turn a family upside down. It’s such an inevitable part of a hunter’s life, this show could benefit from digging into it.

It’s Mary’s turn to be discouraged, John’s turn to be determined. Mary worries that maybe her father just wants to stay lost, especially because the last time she saw him, they got into a big fight about her quitting hunting. Guilt, such a big part of loss for so many.

‘The Winchesters’ Teach Your Children Well

October 25, 2022spnfans

Get ready for a brand new episode of The Winchesters tonight with our review and recap of last week’s episode…

The second episode of the Supernatural prequel, The Winchesters, is titled after a song I loved in the 70s even though I was too young to ever really be “into “ CSNY or see them in concert. Still, it brought back fond memories to actually hear it play in this episode.

As someone who was alive then, I enjoy this show being set in that time period, though sometimes it strikes me as an idealized TV version of the 70s, which was complicated and not all peace-love-flower-power. This episode lets the show really sink into the flower power part of the time, the monster taking up residence outside a commune. It opens with kids (okay young adults maybe, this is a very young show) singing and swaying around a campfire, wearing flower crowns, doing drugs, walking in the woods… It’s a 2022 version of 70s nostalgia, and a little less gritty than I remember.

In a typical opener of a Supernatural universe show, one kid soon sees what he thinks is his dad (in the middle of the woods inexplicably) telling him it’s time to go home – and then growing menacing looking tree vines from his arms and wrapping poor Barry up and spiriting him away.

The Winchesters logo pops up and sparks out just like the Supernatural logos have always done, and that makes me smile for some reason.

To Savannah, Georgia, as we get the Dean Winchester narration about family ties being complicated. (That is the most gigantic understatement ever for Dean Winchester to say!) They raise you, teach you what’s right and wrong – and in some instances teach you how to kill monsters. But no matter who you are, there comes a time when you have to break from them and make your own way.

I guess that was sort of Sam and Dean’s journey; John himself never had to break from his dad since Henry was gone.

Dean: And if you’re not careful, things can get pretty ugly.

Again with the gigantic understatement, Mr. Dean Winchester monster hunter!

Moving on to a pretty flashlit scene, the Core Four finding a bunch of dead zombies while Mary barks orders and Lata enthusiastically investigates a zombie’s dislocatable jaw.

Carlos: You are deeply weird and starting to concern me.

The weird is kinda the point though, Carlos!

The file cabinets are empty of any Akrida information, but Mary finds shotgun shells with “SC” on them – Samuel Campbell always signed his work. She’s convinced this is his way of contacting her. It’s very much a repeat of Dean always convinced that their dad was trying to contact them in Season 1 of Supernatural, insisting that he and Sam keep following his coordinates and his leads.

A few zombies, it turns out, are not dead, and they attack, the very convenient monster trapping box rendered unworkable for some reason (perhaps because it was too convenient). They’re all pretty badass fighters, including John, who ends up splattered with zombie guts. Drake Rodger is very good at the subtle comedy, so this is a running gag that tends to work.

‘Walker’s Rubber Meets The Road’ Takes An Unflinching Look at Trauma

October 25, 2022spnfans

Last week’s episode of ‘Walker’ was one of my favorites so far – and more than that, it felt important. I talk a lot, as a psychologist, about the ways in which fictional media can help us, in everything from providing a much-needed escape, to role models and inspiration, to giving us a way to work through our own ‘stuff’ in a safely displaced manner. The latter is what this episode of Walker did. Aptly titled ‘When Rubber Meets the Road,’ the episode picks up where the first two episodes left off. The brothers Walker, traumatized from captivity and terror and torture, are now physically safe. But that does not translate to any kind of psychological safety, as Liam tries to confide to his big brother.

He says what I said in last week’s review – they should have taken both of them to the hospital, and yes, they should have had MRIs and I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t after those beatings.

“Every time I close my eyes…” Liam begins, but Cordell cuts him off, saying they don’t need to do any of that, that the threat is over.

That’s the last thing Cordell wants to do, to close his eyes and relive the trauma. He’s been trying to perfect not doing that for a long time, it turns out.

Cordell: You’re safe, I’m safe, so let’s not compare notes.

Liam protests that they need to talk about it, but Cordell disagrees.

Cordell: We don’t. It’s better this way.

Liam’s helpless sounding “maybe we have internal injuries” is spot on. They may not be physical injuries that you can see, but both men are deeply wounded internally, psychologically and emotionally.

Cordell cannot go there, and that’s intensely hurtful to Liam, who keeps trying to reach out to him throughout the episode. The imagery of Cordell walking away from Liam is repeated, as though he’s turning his back on his little brother (he isn’t, but the image is nevertheless painful.)

Geri is there to console Cordell and he appreciates it, but also immediately makes a joke about his falling-off shirt.

Cordell: You’re not digging the deep V?

He deflects from her concern for him by asking about everyone else and how they are. And while that’s certainly relevant, because this was a trauma for all of them, it also keeps the focus off Cordi opening up about his own feelings to someone who clearly wants to listen.

We know they’re there, though, just under the surface – we can see it in his expression when he sees the old photo of him in the Marines on the table as he comes home, hearing in his mind “so this is the war hero…” that they taunted him with.

He doesn’t feel like a hero right now.

Big Sky 3.05 – Sheriff Beau Gives Hugs, Rides a Motorcycle, and Saves His Popstar!

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022spnfans

This was a good episode of Big Sky for Beau Arlen admirers. Not a very good episode for poor Deputy Poppernak though.

Here’s my what-happened-to-Sheriff-Beau-in-this-episode recap – in which we got some heroics, some hugs and some hints of Beau’s maybe troubled past…

We also got a teaser photo from bts on set thanks to Kylie Bunbury (Cassie) of Jensen Ackles taking a probably well deserved nap, after some intense weeks of doing double duty promoting and producing the new show ‘The Winchesters’ and also being Sheriff Beau Arlen.

It’s the Sheriff’s day off, so he’s shopping for a motorbike for Emily at Gorilla Dave’s, acknowledging that her “overprotective mom” probably won’t like it, but hoping it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.

I can imagine that he clashed with Carla over things like this in the past, but he’s also now clearly feeling like he’s losing his daughter as she’s been camping with Avery. A glimpse of Beau’s sensitivity and vulnerability when it comes to his daughter, and also the anger that’s bubbling around in there in competition with Avery.

“What’s that you say, you’ve never seen Emily so happy? That’s because you took her glamping and I bought her a bike,” he says, imagining a conversation with either her mother or her stepfather and him being the preferred parent. He must really be feeling insecure and hurt if he thinks he has to buy Emily’s love. Ouch.

His day off goes downhill in a big way when the owner confronts a guy outside and gets stabbed with a screwdriver. Beau snaps into Sheriff mode and runs after him – I’m reminded of Dean Winchester running so fast while filming ‘The End’ that none of the other actors could keep up with him, though Sheriff Beau does not run quite that fast.

(Fans theorize his pants are pretty damn tight…that’s okay, wardrobe…) He leaps a fence as smoothly as Dean Winchester however, and though he doesn’t catch the guy, he does get the license plate of the truck he escapes in.

“I got you,” he says as it disappears.

Beau and Poppernak investigate, Beau saying he has a bad feeling about it all. I say this every week, but he has very good instincts!

Poppernak ends up questioning the wrong person and suddenly has a gun pointed at his head and is taken hostage. Beau sees the truck and realizes Poppernak isn’t answering his phone and also that’s the truck he’s looking for, and we get a real glimpse of Dean Winchester then.

Beau: Sonofabitch that’s him!

No Supernatural fan will ever hear Jensen Ackles say ‘sonofabitch’ and not hear (or miss) Dean Winchester.

A very worried Jenny and Beau find the Deputy’s phone and realize he was in the truck too.

In the back of that truck, one of Poppernak’s captors asks the other if he’s going to kill their hostage. He says he doesn’t know, and oh no, this is not good. The captors aren’t exactly getting along well either, so the whole situation is way too volatile and you can tell Poppernak knows it.

Beau and Jenny figure out the bad guy is a former motocross rider who always escapes on a motorcycle and disappears afterwards, and that he’s stealing a lot more than bikes. Beau takes charge, giving orders and coming up with a plan and is it hot in here?

Walker 3.02 – Not Exactly Sittin’ On A Rainbow!

October 19, 2022spnfans

The first two episodes of Season 3 of Walker have kicked off with a bang! I watch this show mostly for the relationships and the universal human themes that play out, so the arc of Cordell being kidnapped tapped into both of those. The Walker family and close friends having to deal with the horror of just waiting and not knowing rang very true, as did Cordell’s reliance on his memory of Emily. Add to that the Supernatural-reminiscent focus on the Walker brothers’ relationship and I was a happy viewer. Episode 2 was directed by Austin Nichols, a Walker cast alum who is now directing – he filmed some beautiful scenes that added to the dark but intense feel of this episode.

This episode picks up right where the season premiere left off, with Liam being tossed into the cell where Cordell has been held. That was a shock – to both the audience and Cordell – and it raises the stakes for whether or not the mysterious Sean will be able to ‘break’ Walker like he says he wants to.

Liam asks Cordi to promise that he’s not gonna try some Lone Walker Ranger stuff and risk his life to save his little brother. Cordell promises, the brothers clasping hands, and then he holds his injured little brother and I am all filled up with Supernatural-ish brother feels.

Cordell is unchained since they’re playing mind games with him, though I still don’t entirely grasp how Sean thinks this is going to work. Cordell is going by his gut, he says, and assures Liam that he trusts his brother – and Julia Johnson too, the reporter who had been confined upstairs.

The scenes of the brothers locked up together are ominous and dark, but they’re also beautifully filmed, the light coming through the bars making the whole scene look surreal. A moment of applause for the director of photography and for director Austin Nichols! And for Padalecki and Keegan Allen, who make being roughed up and held in a cell look alarmingly attractive.

They give Liam dinner then put a hood over Walker’s head and take him to an office to eat dinner with Sean, part of Sean’s attempts to get Cordell to “join them”. He refuses, saying ‘I’m stuffed” and having flashbacks to when he served. They try to talk Cordell into joining them since he’s “edge of the coin” Cordell Walker, but I think they’ve seriously misunderstood that side of him. He agrees there are some flaws in the system but insists there are good people making strides to fill those cracks. Sean tells him that Emily died at the hands of an organization that he serves, taunting that he’ll never get her back.

“You could save the next widower,” Sean says, but Cordell accuses Sean of murdering people who get in his way, which makes him a terrorist. Sean insists it’s necessary to trigger change, though I don’t really know how he thinks that’s going to happen. Power vacuums often get filled by even worse organizations, and this sounds like it could be one of those.

Big Sky Gets Supernaturally Creepy with ‘Carrion Comfort’

October 18, 2022spnfans

Forget Easter eggs and callbacks, this week’s Big Sky episode was so scary that it could have been an actual Supernatural episode! Here’s my Jensen Ackles/Beau Arlen centric recap of the scares, as well as what we learned about the sheriff in this episode.

The episode starts out with the stereotypical horror movie opening, a woman cleaning up after a dinner in her very dark house on a very dark night, with a creepy figure lurking outside the windows. In typical horror movie fashion, when the dog starts barking, the woman goes outside to investigate – and promptly gets murdered by what looks like some kind of furry monster. Aaaaah!!

That’s the monster of the week that Sheriff Beau and Jenny are hunting, trying to figure out if it’s the husband (who she was cheating on), the daughter or her slightly shady boyfriend, or the guy she was cheating with perhaps. (Spoiler alert: it’s not any of them!)

In the process, we get to see more of Beau’s good instincts.

They meet with the grieving husband and daughter, trying to figure out who might have wanted the woman dead. As they walk out of the house that’s the scene of the crime, Jenny says it’s usually the husband, but Beau’s not so sure.

“Something’s not right about that house,” he tells her.

Also I love Hoyt’s Zeppelin tee shirt. Does that count as a Supernatural Easter egg? I was kidding with the “forget about those” – of course there were some!

Beau looking at the neighbor’s camera footage of the killer: Werewolf? That’s a first for me!

(Dean Winchester is laughing somewhere right now…)

Beau and Jenny also visit an antique shop that looks straight out of a Supernatural episode to question the mom’s boyfriend, and the whole thing is incredibly creepy and shot in a suspenseful way that had me jittery all over again.

‘The Winchesters’ Pilot Episode Brings Lots of Emotions to a Long-Time Supernatural Fan

October 15, 2022spnfans

I already posted my emotional non-spoilery reactions to the pilot episode of The Winchesters which aired at New York Comic Con, but I also wanted to do a rewatch and a deep dive into the events of the episode itself and the introduction of the younger version of John and Mary Winchester who we know from the original series, Supernatural. As a very very passionate Supernatural fan who watched that show for 15 seasons, I felt both anticipation and trepidation at a prequel kicking off – it was mostly due to the reassurance of people who knew the Supernatural world intimately that I went into watching ‘The Winchesters’ pilot hoping for the best. I was also anxious, though. I am very protective of “My Show” and always will be.

So it was with a lot of conflicting emotions that I watched the series premiere. Now that I’m home and have done a rewatch, here’s my deep dive into the events of the pilot and the characters, familiar and new, introduced in the episode.

It’s a suitably spooky beginning, a dark graveyard and an Indiana Jones-esque character entering a crypt by torch light to slice his palm and draw a blood sigil, opening a stone container to retrieve something – and then run like hell trying to escape from the monster that’s now after him! As Supernatural beginnings go, that’s pretty on point!

And then we’re greeted by a “Welcome To Lawrence” sign and an instrumental music background that’s also reminiscent of what Jensen Ackles likes to call “the mothership”, OG Supernatural. That show used lots of signage to mark the brothers’ travels, so this also feels familiar. Young John Winchester (Drake Rodger) is on a bus heading back to Lawrence, fresh from the war, still rattled by flashbacks thanks to the PTSD he’s brought back with him, and clutching a mysterious letter addressed to him.

Apparently the show had to fight hard for the extra budget to film John’s war scenes, but I think those instincts were good – we need to understand how much impact the violence John experienced had on him, and how much guilt he’s carrying around as a result of not being able to save his comrades. Those experiences are integral to his determination to head down the ‘saving people hunting things’ path, especially the guilt and the subsequent need to save everyone he can. Similar motivations will send his sons down the same path eventually, as we all know.

“March 23, 1972” a familiar voice narrates – it’s no surprise to anyone that it’s Jensen Ackles reprising his role of Dean Winchester. The narration is emotional for any Supernatural fan, but it’s also a bit confusing, because we don’t know who Dean is supposed to be talking to, and it actually sounds like he’s talking to us, the audience – and that he’s somehow savvy about the anxiety fans have had over whether this prequel will mess with established canon. “I know this story might sound familiar, but I’m gonna put the pieces together in a way that might surprise you” seems directed at us, the anxious viewers. Perhaps that’s only for this first bit of narration but it struck me as interesting. I guess we’ll see!

I’m not entirely convinced that we really needed Dean as the narrator, as much as I’ve missed having my favorite character in the history of the universe on my screen. I would kinda like to watch this story as its own thing, and am not sure I need the frame of Dean looking back. But hopefully they worked that into the ongoing story in an organic way that just hasn’t been revealed yet.

Anyway, John does indeed bump into Mary Campbell (Meg Donnelly) just like we’d heard in the original show. It’s a “meet cute” in the tradition of meet cutes, and both John and Mary are likable, but they don’t get that cup of coffee that we heard they did right away. Instead, Mary walks away with a “see ya around, soldier boy”, a cheeky shout out to Jensen Ackles’ role on The Boys as Soldier Boy.

I admit I smiled at that and both her and John’s love of licorice (something their son Dean will later share and which I cannot fathom at all..). Also I love Mary’s bell bottoms! Don’t tell me that bell bottoms aren’t awesome, I remember how awesome they were! I’m hoping fervently that Danneel Ackles agrees with me, because I’m fairly certain she’s the biggest influence on the fashion choices we’ll see on this show.

John’s reunion with his mother Millie (Bianca Kajlich) is frosty to start, which is interesting. Millie owns the gas station and is a mechanic, and she pulls no punches reminding John that from her perspective, “my husband and son walked out on me, so…”

She also clearly adores him as she sweeps him into a welcome home hug.



Supes Ain't Always Heroes	There'll Be Peace When You Are Done
Family Don't End with Blood	Fan Phenomena: Supernatural

Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls	Fandom at the Crossroads

Fan Culture: Theory/Practice	Supernatural Psychology: Roads Less Traveled

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